


Improvisation

by apparitionism



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 00:41:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1668404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere, Bering and Wells inhabit a positive future... and sometimes, improvising turns out quite well indeed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Improvisation

Helena removed the piece of paper from her pocket with a great flourish. On it, she had written only, “Say something eloquent,” which was all she had had time to write, for she had remembered at the very last moment that she was supposed to have composed vows. Which had, in the present day, as far as she could gather, become a speech of some kind, in addition to the actual promises that each soon-to-be spouse made to the other. When Myka had told her about this, she had been appalled. But the entire wedding process was, at base, one appalling thing after another, so she was not at all surprised to find that the ceremony itself had changed beyond all recognition. She supposed she should be pleased that at least the banns had not been resurrected.

So. She would have to improvise. Well, such a need was not at all unusual, and she was certainly quite able to come up with some delightful words that would convey her pleasure at marrying Myka. On this lovely day. (That sounded all right. She would start with that.) She cleared her throat. “On this lovely day,” she began, as Myka looked at her and blinked, as if it were all unbelievable, even the day’s loveliness. She really did look beautiful, Myka did. “On this lovely day, on which you look so beautiful.”

Myka smiled. Softly, shyly. That particular smile graced her face rarely, for it spoke of vulnerability, all the ways in which she could be hurt… all the ways in which she trusted Helena not to hurt her. Helena realized she needed to start speaking again only after Myka’s eyes changed, just the slightest bit, from shy to expectant.  
  
“Yes, you look beautiful. Any words I could say would be inadequate to the task of conveying my pleasure at marrying you, but I shall try.” Helena paused, as if theatrically, but in reality because words were, in fact, failing her. “Words are so often inadequate. I have tried, many times, to explain to you, in great detail, the extent of my love, but I have found myself adrift, unable to express the sublime vastness of my feelings, of these feelings that encompass the two of us, that have indeed led us to this point, today. This lovely day,” she repeated. “A day that I honestly could not have imagined until quite recently. A day that I find emblematic of how far so many things have come—myself, you, our love, the world in which we live. I confess that I had no hopes of such a day, that it is only lately that I began to believe that I could enjoy such happiness. And that so much of the world is willing to sanction, and even to celebrate, that happiness… well. Once again, words are inadequate. Indeed, so many of the words I use are antiquated, and so much in this world is so new, that it seems ludicrous to believe that they could still apply. And yet, many do: I. You. Love. And also: this lovely day. Many of the elements contributing to its loveliness may require new words, but some do not: the sun is shining, and two people who find themselves together and in love are being married.”  
  
She stopped speaking and looked at those assembled to witness this, her and Myka’s marriage. “Before all of you,” she resumed, “this is what I vow.” This was the point from which there would be no going back. Helena knew that she had spent far too many of her earthly minutes attempting to go back—back in time, back on her word, back to the Warehouse itself. Now was the time to go forward. She took Myka’s hands in hers. “This is what I vow: I will not lie to you. I will not hide from you.” She stopped again. Something was wrong with those words… ah. She had it. “I’m sorry; I need to rephrase. I realize that I have been thinking in terms of things I will _not_ do. Instead, allow me to speak positively. Here is what I _will_ do: I will tell you the truth. I will be… what is the modern formulation? Open with you. And although you have told me in no uncertain terms that you dislike this next one: I will put your interests before my own.” At that, Myka did give a small pout, accompanied by a slight roll of the eyes, a “don’t think we won’t talk about this later” expression. “Nevertheless,” Helena said, “it is a promise I must make. And finally.” She smiled then, because she could not help herself. The beauty of the day was real. “Finally, I vow to love you with all of my heart. I would say ‘from this day forward,’ but given that I have loved you with all of my heart for such a long time… this day is merely the day on which I am formalizing the statement.” She smiled again and felt as if she might never stop. “Is that acceptable?”  
  
Myka smiled too, then, and said, “Yes, I’d say that’s acceptable.” Then she leaned close to Helena’s ear and whispered, “You are not fooling _anyone_. You totally forgot to write any vows.”  
  
“On the contrary,” Helena whispered back, “I am fooling _everyone_. Well, apparently except you. There is not a dry eye in the house. Again, apparently, except yours.”  
  
“My eyes are dry because I am having to concentrate so hard on not laughing you out of this ceremony, you fraud.”  
  
But then Myka kissed her ear, and Helena knew it was all right. She said, “In any case, I believe it is your turn.”  
  
At this, Myka turned a truly unbecoming shade of red. “About that,” she said.  
  
Helena required only a moment to realize what she meant: “You are a _fine one_ to scold me,” she said, but now she was struggling to contain laughter as well. Both of them up here, giggling like schoolgirls…   
  
“Yeah, don’t start,” Myka said. She turned to the assembled and said, “Here’s the thing. I didn’t write my vows. We were really busy, practically up to the start of the ceremony, so I never really had a chance to sit down and think about what I wanted to say. What I needed to say. But like Helena,” and she gave Helena a hard side-eye (which, coupled with what she said next, nearly set Helena off laughing again), “I’ve put _a lot of thought_ into what I really felt it would be important to make promises about. I’ve always been kind of afraid of making promises, because life is so uncertain, and sometimes you just can’t keep those promises, no matter how much you want to or try to.” She turned to face Helena, who was, for her part, beginning to wonder if perhaps Myka might be considering _not_ getting married today. “But the funny thing is, you make me want to make promises. You make me want to stand up in front of people and say things like love, honor, and obey. Yes, I said ‘obey,’ but nobody should get any ideas from that, okay, Pete?”  
  
“Aw, man!” was muttered from Helena’s right.  
  
Myka went on, “I was afraid when this whole thing started. I was afraid of everything, every day, afraid that it would stop, that it would go on, that I wouldn’t be able to handle it, whatever way it worked out.”  
  
“Myka,” Helena said, just to make her stop—these things did not need to be said out loud, not again, and certainly not in front of their friends.  
  
But Myka would not be stopped. “No, this is important. If I’d been able to write it down, I could have _edited_ it down, but the upshot is that for most of the time we’ve been in this relationship, in all the crazy forms it’s taken, I was so busy being afraid that I didn’t appreciate it. I didn’t appreciate you, I didn’t appreciate _us_. How incredibly lucky we are. How we, the two of us, are already a promise, that we always have been: A promise that good things will come out of the worst things. That no matter how dark it is, the dawn _will_ come. And seeing that that’s true… well, faced with that, how can I be afraid of making promises? Big ones, even ones that I have no idea how I’ll keep them?” She took an enormous breath, so enormous that Helena worried that it portended Myka’s falling over in a faint. “And the answer is, I can’t be afraid. I just can’t. Not anymore. But I’m going to take a page from your book, Helena, and I’m going to say what I _will_ do, as opposed to what I _won’t_ do. Here’s what I will do: I will be brave. Not the kind of brave that involves fighting bad guys; I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem with that. Instead, I’ll be the kind of brave you told me to be, it feels like ages ago, when we both thought it was the end. I’ll be that kind of brave. I’ll stand up in front of these witnesses and I’ll say that I promise to love you, too. With all of my heart. I’ll honor you—but not for the same things the rest of the world does. And yeah, I’ll even obey you, for example if you tell me not to touch the stove because it’s hot and I’ll burn myself. Or, if you yell ‘duck!’, I’ll just do it and ask questions later.”  
  
“That’s quite… accommodating of you,” Helena said. She was unsure of how to feel about being obeyed. In the past, she would have said that that word, “obey,” coupled with the bride’s obligation to say it, was a prime reason for her attempts to resist marriage. It had never occurred to her that the situation could ever be reversed—that she could be the recipient of that promise rather than its issuer. “I didn’t make the same promise to you,” she pointed out.  
  
“I know,” Myka said. “I figure it probably would mean something different to you.”  
  
Pete said, with a cough, “Not the rehearsal, ladies! The actual wedding, still going on! With guests who might not be interested in hearing you work through your _issues_.” Helena watched, amused, as he glanced ostentatiously behind him at the attendees and raised his hands. “Not my fault, guests,” he said. “Those of you who don’t spend all your time with them, like I do? Are, let’s face it, kinda lucky. We might get to the eating and dancing part of this shindig in, I dunno, about an hour. Or two. Maybe. Before that, though, we’ll get hankie-twisting about words and meanings and feelings and all that.”  
  
“Pete,” Myka said, and Helena could hear the fight between laughter and danger in her voice, “this isn’t your wedding.”  
  
“Oh, how well I know _that_.”  
  
“Which means, if Helena and I want to stand up here and deliver the Gettysburg Address, you know what you get to do?”  
  
He sighed. “Develop a whole new appreciation for Abraham Lincoln?”  
  
“Exactly,” she affirmed. “So anyway, before Pete interrupted, I was saying something about obeying, which I’ll do, and honoring and loving, which I’ll also do. And being brave. Which is, for me, the big one that encompasses the others. So we aren’t promising each other exactly the same things, but I think we agree on the fundamentals. And Helena, you beautiful, eloquent fool, I agree with you completely about one thing in particular: this is a lovely day.” Then she smiled a smile that transformed her: where before, she had simply looked like a very happy Myka wearing a different dress and a bit more makeup than usual, now she looked like a bride. On her wedding day.  
  
Helena, to her utter shock, felt her eyes well with tears. She watched in horror as the smile left Myka’s face. “No, no,” she tried to say, but it was difficult to speak through the thickness in her throat, “no, it’s that I hadn’t… it was _humorous_ to me, the situation with the vows, and yes, I said what I said, and believe me, I meant every word, but I allowed myself to be distracted from their meaning.” She drew in a breath. “This is our _wedding day_ ,” she said, and now she felt herself awed by the words. “Its loveliness is… all-encompassing.” Now she felt a different smile, one that she suspected resembled Myka’s quite closely, overtake her.  
  
Myka said, “I was wondering when you were going to realize it.” She chuckled softly. “I should have guessed it wouldn’t be till right in the middle of the ceremony.” She brought her hand up and brushed back the lock of Helena’s hair that kept threatening to obscure her vision. (“Should I wear my hair up?” Helena had asked, terrified that Myka would say yes. Putting her hair up would make her look like her old self, that woman who, for all her unconventionality, could not leave the house, could barely leave her room, without ensuring that her hair was properly contained. Myka, fortunately, had answered, “Why would you do that? I love your hair down. It gets in your eyes sometimes, and if that’s going to bug you, then okay, but…” Helena was so relieved at that point that it would not have mattered what Myka said next; however, what she did say was: “I really love it when you get frustrated and pull it back out of your face. It’s… well, Pete would say that it’s hot.” And so Helena resolved that she would never again wear her hair bound, unless there were some danger posed to said hair by, for example, a blowtorch.) Now Myka shook her head. “You’re impossible.”  
  
“My timing is a bit off,” Helena agreed, unable to stifle a small sniffle.  
  
“Okay,” said Steve, their officiant. Helena and Myka had both agreed that he was uniquely qualified to bring a sense of calm and dignity to the proceedings; Pete, of course, had to be mollified (“But Claud’s going to be Myka’s main person who stands next to her—well, other than HG—and so I already got ordained on the Internet and everything!”) by being promised an appropriately essential role as Helena’s “fellow agent of honor.” “Speaking of timing, it feels like time to make things legal. You both ready for that?”  
  
Helena was suddenly terrified (irrationally, she was fairly certain) that Myka would say no. A firm no. A no that would inflict on Helena as much damage as possible, that would stand as her revenge for everything Helena had put her through. It would be perfect, so perfect, the kind of plan that Helena herself, the Helena of old, would have concocted, would have put into play, would have drawn out with all the patience of a Machiavel… the fear knifed into her so cleanly that she half expected to buckle over.   
  
Myka said, “I’m ready.”  
  
And just like that, Helena’s awe returned, as did her awareness of the sunlight making Myka’s curls shine like copper, the light breeze carrying the scent of the roses Claudia held, Claudia’s barely contained glee, Pete’s solid strength, the softness resting in Steve’s gaze… “I’m ready too,” she said.

END


End file.
